Wildflower Season Means...

...flowers for our table! Yay! It really does a lot to brighten a room...

31w 4d

I don't know why I torture myself like this, except that I know someday I (and my children) will appreciate seeing this, and if I don't put it here, it will disappear. This is at 31w 4d, after a morning run.

It's That Time of Year Again!

The flowers are starting to bloom everywhere, and for me that means PICTURES!! Bear with me as I de-rust my photo skillzzzz.

I couldn't resist snapping a pic of this dude.

Here we go again...

Alright peeps. You're so lucky! I was reading through my blog of the weeks before and after Littler was born and I decided I need to have some sort of record of this whole late pregnancy/birth/postpartum thing.

So....today is 31w 1d. Not like you care, but I've gained about 17-18 pounds so far. This could be fun to know in the future, especially if I gain like 20 more in the next 9ish weeks... Luckily, I've still been able to run 3 times a week, along with Cardio Dance once a week (I LOVE that class!) and the gym once a week. I'm really determined to exercise for as long as I can in this pregnancy. Some days feel better than others, and some days I'm faster than others, but all in all, exercise is awesome! I have a written goal to run to at least 34 weeks, but of course I'll stop before that if something comes up. I'm sure in a few years I'll care about this, so, here's what it feels like to run: my breathing is rarely challenged because I can't move my body fast enough to get my heart rate above what I'm guessing is something around 150 bpm (thank goodness for updated exercise guidelines, btw!); I have a round ligament on my right side that really likes to spasm or something, every once in a while, and when that happens badly, I HAVE to walk, or even stop--luckily that's only happened really bad twice; my lower legs BURN when I run, especially for the first 15-20 minutes, but I think it's because that part is usually uphill, because hills really seem to exacerbate the problem; my pelvis is sometimes in pain while I'm running, but not bad enough to make me want to walk (I've used how I feel the rest of the day as a gauge to make sure I'm not overdoing it); despite all of these things, my overall running experience each time is positive--when I'm finished I'm sweaty and have lots of endorphins, which makes it all worth it!

Aside from exercise, on the days that I spend too much time standing or bending, I get reeeeeaally bad sciatica on my right side, which is somewhat crippling (seriously). I need to stop doing that, but I don't notice until it's been too long and then it's too late and the rest of the day is shot. Luckily, I wake up all better.

Littlest feels like a big doofer already. He's always up in my ribs and such and likes to kick me in two places at once.

Oh yeah, and I've been having way less Braxton Hicks with this pregnancy than with either of the other two. Who knows what that means. Maybe nothing. But maybe this one won't be as early as the other two? I'm okay with that. So far...

That all sounds kind of negative, but those are the only things that stand out right now. Really, overall I feel good! This pregnancy is going really well!

Half Marathon Pics

Here we are before the race. Ready to go!


Our husbands and kids met us at about mile 8 and cheered us on. That was awesome!




Here we are at mile 13, right about to run into the finish. See how happy we look?

Tri for Fun #3

I did my first triathlon ever this morning, more than 10 minutes faster than my ultimate goal! I'm so excited about it!

It started off with a 400 yard swim in a nice clean lake. Before the tri, I read as much as could about peoples' experiences on this course and discovered that it helps to start off to the left side of the big pack of people when you start the swim, so I did, and I was able to jump right out into the front group of swimmers. The swim was much better than I feared it would be--I was worried that people would be kicking me and splashing water in my face the whole time, but I barely touched any other people at all! Peter told me I was one of the first people to finish in my heat, which was exciting. My time for the 400 yard swim was 6:25.

I took a depressingly slow amount of time in the first transition area, and my friend who came in a minute and a half behind me in the swim headed off onto the bike ride right in front of me. She rode off in front of me never to be seen again, because she's a blasted fast sort of person. I was expecting the swim to bike transition to be easy, but instead I was pooped because I swam much faster than I normally do in the pool. My legs were so shaky and tired and my heart rate was really up! But I managed to get into a groove and completed the 11 mile bike route without any problems. I even managed to muster up a really loud cheer for my friend when we passed each other on an out and back section of the ride.

Once I got off my bike, all I had to do was take off my helmet, but I had no idea where I was supposed to be running, so I wasted a few seconds figuring that out, but not too many. The transition from bike to run felt AWFUL! I definitely did not train well enough for that part. I ran really slow for the first half of the run or so and was finally able to get in stride for a little while, but then I was really tired so I slowed down a little, but then I was at the END and saw my friends and family cheering for me so I sprinted past the poor woman several yards in front of me who didn't have friends and family there to cheer her on and help her push her little red button. My finish time was 1 hr 18 minutes and some odd seconds. And it was so much fun! I can't wait to sign up for another one and actually train right this time! (I don't think the stuff I did could really be considered training, aside from the running, which definitely did count.) (And in case you're wondering, my blasted fast sort of friend runs a lot faster than me too, and finished the race in 1 hr 10 min.)

I'll post pics soon, probably along side the pics from the half marathon that I have yet to post (but are finally edited!).

Regina Spektor

I like Regina Spektor.

Fidelity

On the Radio

Eet

Better

Getting Faster...

I guess that title is a little misleading because it's really more than just 'getting faster'. My exercise buddies and I have been planning on working on our speed now that we've conquered distance and today was our first official day of trying it out. Luckily, I felt like it went really well and had to document it! We started out small, running 2 miles, and did the two miles in just about 19 minutes even, giving us a mile pace of 9:30!! Woohoo for us! I know that in the world of running that is still not fast, but I feel like it's fast enough not to make fun of how slow I am anymore. Our goal is to work on speed a few times a week and just run without thinking about it the other few times. I'm not going to make a really specific target yet, but I'm running a 10K on October 2 and I'm hoping to set my goal time with a mile pace of 10 minutes or less. We'll see. 10K is a pretty long time to keep up a pace that is 2 minutes per mile (or more) faster than my average pace for the half marathon training.

Wish me luck!

Back at it

Well, now that I've completely lost fitness after taking a three week vacation from exercise, I'm training for a little sprint triathlon, which will happen on August 15. I've always wanted to do a triathlon and FINALLY it's going to happen! I'm pretty excited! I'm hoping to do an Olympic distance tri in a couple years, too.

The distances for this sprint tri are 400 yard swim, 11 mile bike, and 5k run.

Wish me luck! Training has started off pretty nicely already, so I'm feeling good about it!

Half Marathon Results

For the record, I finished my half marathon, running non-stop (with somewhere between 5-10 minutes of veeeeerrrrrrrrry slow jogging while I waited for my friends at the port-a-potty)! (Running with people was much more important to me than getting a time a few minutes faster!) I came in 945 out of 1400 and finished in 2 hrs 39 minutes flat. The first 11 miles passed by pretty easily, but then we could taste the finish and started running faster so the last two were pretty rough on me. I was fighting back sobs of pain and mental/emotional exhaustion at the end, but I DID IT! Yippee! But MAN my legs were hurting SO BAD at the end and for the first few hours after the race. Wow. That was intense.

Next stop: sprint triathlon in August!

Half Marathon in Two Weeks

My race is coming up so quickly! Today we ran our longest run before the half-marathon (11.2 miles) and starting next week we'll be tapering a bit so our poor legs have some time to recover. While we were running today, I was talking to my training buddies (Brittney and Nicole) and we were all talking about how none of us ever would have thought ourselves capable of running such long distances. We were running for 2 hrs 18 minutes today (no stopping and no walking!! Well, there were a few stoplights but I jog in place at them so I don't creak when I start back up again...). That's a LONG time to be running (or, jogging--you can do the math if you like--we're not doing this for time)! And honestly, parts of my legs and feet hurt SO BADLY after about 5 miles, but it's really helpful to have a goal and a training schedule to keep me on track. My only goal is to finish the race without walking, so that's my goal for each training run, too.

On our shorter runs (5 miles), we've been focusing on running a bit faster, so our pace is about 30-45 seconds faster per mile on those days than it is for our long runs. Now, after our "halfie", we'll be focusing on speed and hills more, rather than distance, but our base distance will still be 5 miles. AND we'll probably be doing a sprint triathlon in August. Woohoo!

Hooray for getting fit!

A Rant

First, a little background: we use WIC. Okay, now that that's out in the open, I'm going to vent.

I went to Safeway today to get some milk and eggs and other WIC stuff. The pertinent items for this story are 2 gallons of 1% milk, 1 gallon of 2% milk and a 1/2 gallon of whole milk. We always get it this way because Littler still drinks whole milk but the rest of us drink 1%, and when the rest is gone, we compromise at 2%. I had two WIC checks, this one:

And this one:

Unfortunately for me, the cashier decided that Check 1 was saying that the kind of milk I had to get was whole milk, because it says "pasteurized" and it doesn't specify that I can get any kind of milk like Check 2 does (nonfat, 1%, 2%, or whole). "No'" I told her, "both checks say pasteurized and nowhere on Check 1 does it specify whole milk." (Okay, I don't really talk that way, but I wish I could on the fly! That's the gist though.) She called the manager over to settle the situation. I happened to know that the manager was a reasonable woman who has cleared up some cashier WIC mistakes for me in the past, so I was relieved. The managercame over and proceeded to tell me exactly what the cashier had told me, and when I tried to explain their mistake, she wouldn't even listen to me! She told me to talk to my WIC office to figure out what I could get with each check. I told her that every time I check, they're wrong and I'm right and I pointed out the word 'pasteurized' on my disputed jugs of 1% milk but they didn't care. I told them all of this milk is pasteurized. As she was turning and walking away, I'm only somewhat ashamed to admit, I yelled at them. I was so upset at them that I was shaking and flustered. And I still get riled up now when I think about it. I know it doesn't make that much of a difference besides that the whole family will have to drink more fattening milk for the next two weeks. But still. They were WRONG and unreasonable and they treated me like I was the one who needed to get things sorted out. And in case you're wondering I, and everyone else I know who uses WIC, get non whole milk with that check ALL the time. This is the third uncomfortable WIC scenario at this Safeway in a row. I think I'm going to start using another.

Montebello Wildflowers

pain l'ancienne

Fresh bready goodness right out of my very own oven. Mmmmmmm...!

Go Me!

This will probably get old, since I'll be running record distances for myself every week, but... I RAN 5 MILES STRAIGHT TODAY! Woohoo!!!!!

I'm Insane

Well it's official! On Saturday June 27 I will be running a HALF MARATHON near Bend, Oregon. Wow. My good friend exercise buddy is having a family reunion in which many of them will be participating in the half marathon and has been semi-planning on doing it for quite a while. I figured, if my exercise buddy is going to train for this, I might as well do it with her, otherwise I'll end up doing nothing. So yesterday we made it real by registering for the race. Yikes! I'm nervous and excited! Over the next 12ish weeks we'll build ourselves from being able to run 4 miles to running a half marathon. Woohoo!

So Much To Do

I'm trying to focus on too much extracurricular stuff at the same time. These are the things I've focused on in the last week:

*Making the perfect pizza (wow! We're really close with this one! And if you've ever eaten pizza we made WITHOUT a pizza stone you ain't seen nothin' yet!)
*Making brownies that are as good or better than the kind from a box (with chewy and moist being the goal as opposed to cakey)
*Running races
*Thinking about going back to school in Linguistics (but not actually actively doing anything about it--that will come later)
*Wildflower photography

Anyway, I feel kind of like I'm on a merry-go-round of possibilities and at one moment I'll be thinking about one thing and the next I'm on to something completely different. I think it makes Peter dizzy. As for me, I just end up feeling kinda stupid, since I almost never accomplish ANYTHING as a result of riding the merry-go-round. I need to get off every once in a while and actually DO it.

Wildflower Season

We went out for a few minutes today to make a dent in the number of wildflowers we need to get pictures of before they all go away. Here are a few to whet your appetite:

I Ran

Okay--don't get confused from the title. I actually run a few times a week, between other workouts like going to the gym and Cardio Dance and Cardio Hip Hop and other interesting things. BUT, recently my workout buddy and I have been trying to up the distance in our runs (and the speed, both a little at a time), and on Friday we accomplished something very big. We think it's big anyway. We ran The Dish! Well...this is the part where I admit that we walked partway up a hill that lasts for more than a mile. But we ran from home all the way to The Dish and went around the path and out the other side and ran all the way home, too, totaling 5.5 miles for the run/walk. We walked less than a mile of it, and that place is HILL-Y! So, we basically think we're the bomb. But the fun doesn't end there. No sirree. We will keep doing it until we don't have to walk any of it AND we'll do it faster eventually too.

Man we're good.

A computing model of pressure distribution from tight underwear

I can't help but find it humorous that this article even exists. It just gives me the funnies. :o)

A computing model of pressure distribution from tight underwear